As she matures Cassandra Sandsmark becomes the new Wonder Woman. One day as a daughter of Zeus she will also be the queen of Themyscira, though she will have to wait for Hippolyta and then Diana to finish their reigns first. Cassie is not in any hurry to assume such responsibility though, she is enjoying herself as a superhero, adventuring with her husband Conner Kent, Superman. She is not yet quite as skilled as Diana was as she is still much younger than Diana but her skills continue to improve and she has now attained her full power as the champion of the Amazons.

Cassie has never really been a resident of Themyscira, for all the time she has spent there training and learning she did not grow up on the island as part of the sisterhood. She still has the perspective of a modern woman rather than being a mythical warrior. She is no less committed to their mission but does not feel the need to live in the traditional manner of an Amazon. Some of their more exotic rites rather freaked her out when she attended them, she had heard rumors about them from senior members of the Justice League but it was quite another thing to be expected to take part in them. She had to explain that she wasn't comfortable with what they were doing with each other, she was a married woman. The Amazons accepted this, they respect personal choice and freedom, but most of them were baffled by why she would decline to take part in the fun.

On the Justice League Cassie is more aggressive and combative than Diana was. Her lasso violently incapacitates foes rather than being an agent of truth. The sword at her hip is a gift from her brother, Ares the god of war. While Diana was an implacable foe of the war god Cassie has an accommodation with him. She accepts that war is often necessary, that you must fight to protect the weak and innocent. Ares in some of his aspects embodies this strength and courage, what Diana fought against was his dark side, Thanatos, the god of violent death who revels in violence and bloodshed as a way to win power and riches. She often meets with her brother and seeks to encourage him to give the mortals the strength to fight against the many threats that assail the mortal world rather than just getting them to pointlessly war among themselves. One day she hopes to effect a reconciliation between her father and his son and at last reunite the house of Olympus.

Last edited by Gamebook on Tue Jun 26, 2018 5:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

Romulus Lycan (almost certainly not his real name) is a former henchman of Mr Freeze, like Captain Cold. Unlike Snart though he is not just a regular guy with a few stolen gadgets, he has taken his emulation of his old boss further and has had himself subjected to the same substance that altered Victor into what he is now. This has to an extent given him some of his immunity to cold, though he did not take it to such an extreme and so can still function in a normal temperature environment. While quite skilled in technology he has nowhere near Fries' genius and so has constructed a simpler version of Freeze's suit. He doesn't need the elaborate cooling system built into it so it is just a set of armor plates and a helmet. To keep his hands free he has built freeze guns onto the gauntlets. Where Mr Freeze is heavy and lumbering Wolf is fast and agile, running and leaping and often engaging foes in melee to slash them up rather than just relying on his cold guns. The cryonic alteration of his body has made him stronger and faster than a normal human, though at the price of having cold, grey flesh through which you can see the black blood in his veins.

Lycan now works as an underworld assassin and bounty hunter, his weapons equally suited to both capturing and killing. Appropriately he is a cold-hearted professional, in it only for the money. He regards his old boss as a genius but Freeze's strangeness and obsession led him into direct confrontations with the cops and the Bat, and there was only one way that could go in the end. Lycan avoids the authorities as much as possible, but if some idiot kid vigilante interferes with his business he will turn them into frozen strips of meat. He is more reticent about taking on the Bat, he respects his rep. Lycan blows much of his money on high-living, particularly in the Penguin's joints which are more comfortable for him as Cobblepot keeps them at near refrigerated temperatures. He enjoys taking a jacuzzi set so cold that there is ice floating in it, and the girl/s he has hired to entertain him are turning blue in the freezing water.

When the Amazons were for a time exiled from Themyscira and the island was left empty various groups sought to move in and take it over or pillage it. Many of them fell foul of the various dangerous monsters which live on and around the island that are normally kept restrained by the Amazons but some succeeded in penetrating the treasure vaults. The man who would become the Wraith was part of such a group, and the only survivor from their expedition. He got away from the island with two items, the mythical Ring of Gyges and the Godkiller sword, the weapon originally forged to kill Ares himself. Angry at how their employer had sent them in with little knowledge of what they would be facing and no consideration for their lives he used these weapons to kill him and take all the money that had been promised to his crew while keeping the magical artifacts.

Since then the Wraith has been operating as an elite assassin. The Ring of Gyges lets him become invisible to all forms of sight, which makes preventing him from infiltrating to get close to his target nearly impossible. The Godkiller sword he mostly just uses as a conventional blade, he is unaware that any immortal being slain by it will be dead forever rather than being able to remanifest again as usual. He just appreciates how it is indestructible and can apparently cut through anything. His ring he has found comes with drawbacks, it drains the life force of the wearer whenever they use it. To stop it from slowly killing him he has had devised a special device which feeds it artificially generated life force. Rather than having to manually adjust the ring to activate it he uses the control panel on his left forearm to carefully tune its feed when he needs to literally disappear. The magical invisibility it grants him is perfect, there is not the slightest shimmer in the air. So long as keeps quiet he is basically undetectable to a normal human, though creatures with acute other senses such as dogs can locate him. This is why he favors a sword as a weapon, it can be used to take out targets without betraying his presence and location as a gunshot can. Its cloak of invisibility extends to his clothing and weapons, but cannot extend more than a few inches from his skin which means he cannot hide other people or large objects.

The Wraith for all his seeming impunity to move around and kill whoever he wants to is nevertheless perpetually fearful and paranoid. He treasures his ring and is convinced that everybody else covets it, so he now never meets with other people except when invisible. Only if he has them completely helpless will he become visible when he then enjoys terrifying them by alternately appearing and disappearing. The sinister device on his faceplate is there to create a terrifying apparition when he reveals himself. What he fears the most are the Amazons that are hunting him now that they have returned to Themyscira and found many of their treasures missing. The ones he has stolen are two of the most dangerous they possess and must not be left in mortal hands. Even for Wonder Woman though the Wraith is an elusive and dangerous opponent. Their pursuit is driving him to make a pact with Ares for protection. Ares has told him that the source of their power is the Olympian gods, so if he helps the war god slay the other Olympians all the Amazons will lose their powers and he will no longer have to fear them. With the ring he wears and the sword he bears and the help of Ares the Wraith could be a serious threat to the very existence of the gods of Olympus.

Zatanna Zatara is a genuine wizard who is also a magician. Her father was Giovanni Zatara, a normal human who had no magical talent but was an accomplished stage magician, and Sindella, a sorceress from the Homo Magi, the men of magic. Zatanna has a natural magical power that manifests as anything she says magically comes immediately true! This caused a lot of trouble in her childhood until her father and mother taught her how to control her power. Zatanna can work almost any magical effect but these days she unleashes it by saying what she wants spelt backwards. She does not actually speak backwards, that always sounds like someone inhaling while making a whining/buzzing noise. Instead she says the word as it would sound phonetically if the order of the letters were reversed in its accepted English spelling. This is tricky enough that it stops her from accidentally casting spells while still giving her the freedom to do whatever she wants.

Zatanna's magic is not unlimited in its scope or range of applications, and Zatanna further chooses for ethical reasons of her own not to employ it for certain uses. It is best at manipulating magic and people, transforming or redirecting them. She could easily kill people by turning them into fish and letting them drown on land for example, but Zatanna is a strict pacifist and will never deliberately harm another intelligent being. She also will not use her magic for personal gain of any kind, the most she will do is magic herself up jewels and pretty dresses for a night out, and adding the occasional sorcerous flourish to her magic stage show to wow her audience and keep her colleagues in the Magic Circle guessing. The main use she puts her magic to is in combating rogue wizards and dangerous supernatural phenomena. These represent a major threat to the world as they interrupt the normal procession of causality, causing the universe to begin degenerating into chaos. If enough of it were to be allowed to run wild it would allow things like the demon god Trigon to manifest, potentially bringing about the apocalypse and the end of the mortal world in blood and fire. This would obviously be a bad thing.

For a wizard Zatanna is accessible and easily understood, not being as remote and strange as most of them are. The Justice League knows of Doctor Fate for example but are wary of him and try to avoid getting involved in his business. By contrast Zatanna is actually a member of the League and serves as their consultant on magical matters. While it is tempting to use Zatanna's power as a get-out-of-jail-free card most of the members of the JL are terrified of magic and seek to avoid employing it whenever possible. Those who do understand what magic is such as Wonder Woman are even more wary of it, they know how much more frightened people should be of it. Diana is reluctant to employ any magic that is not safely bound in an Amazon magical weapon, free magic, such as magical spells, she regards as so dangerous as to be almost never worth using.

When not assisting the main Justice League Zatanna has her own informal coterie of magical heroes, the Justice League Dark. This has no structure or membership roster, it is just whoever she manages to recruit to resolve whatever magical threat is menacing the world now. At some or other time almost every hero with magical powers has been on it, as well as a few villains, gods and strange magical entities from beyond time and space. Her most frequent collaborator though is John Constantine. As a mage she is vastly more powerful than he is but he brings a low cunning to their work that she is too honest and good to be able to think of. They have been romantically involved at times, but he is unable to make a commitment to her and she isn't sure she would want one even if he could.

The person she deals with most in the more conventional (at least as far as that word applies to such people) hero community is Batman. He has encountered magical dangers many times in his investigations into the sinister underbelly of Gotham and it is the one thing that he has never been able to understand and outwit. He is a man of science and rational explanations and the bizarre arbitrariness of magic baffles him. Zatanna will admit that she doesn't understand it either, magic is not something that can be understood no matter how many tomes and books of spells and rituals are written. She just undoes it by her force of will. Zatanna has been romantically attracted to Batman ever since she met him as a teenager when he spent some time with her father learning escapology and sleight of hand from him. Batman though considers that they are too different as people for there to really be anything between them, and also he is secretly freaked out by her magic. For all her beauty and charm Zatanna is fundamentally an otherworldly being who has never managed to maintain a relationship with a mortal man.

Zatanna's base of operations, on the rare occasions that she is not on tour with her stage performance, is Shadowcrest, one of the Houses of Mystery. This antique old wooden mansion can appear literally anywhere, being able to shift around the world at her command. Not many people have visited it, it can be dangerous for those without magical powers of their own. It contains all sorts of magical artifacts and beings collected by Zatanna and her parents or brought to her by her magical allies. People pinching stuff from it has been a frequent problem for Zatanna in the past so now it is protected by the Wiih, a near mindless entity from a magical dimension that is immensely powerful and invulnerable to all known magical and mundane forces. Anyone taking something from the mansion causes it to manifest next to them and if they do not put back what they picked up very quickly it will grab them and crush them into a liquid. It's presence also magically disrupts almost all superpowers, magic and technology, so you cannot escape or fight back. After a few nasty incidents that left difficult to remove stains on her carpets people got the message and now no one invades the mansion.

Zatanna makes her living and the public know her as a stage magician. She is one of the world's most celebrated and tickets for her performances are nearly always sold out well in advance. She is also available for private bookings at exorbitant prices. Some of her smaller and more intimate shows are also burlesque acts where she indulges her love for titillating costumes and performances. The only way to see one of these though is to attend in person, cameras of any kind are not allowed and when people have smuggled them in they have strangely not worked. There are rumors that some of her magic is for real, but most people scoff at this and her fellow professional magicians often replicate her more incredible feats to show that it is all done by human talent. Zatanna does toss in some real spells at times if she likes the audience, but nothing that would put them or her in any danger.

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Zoom is the person who appeared to Barry Allen and gave him his speed force powers. He is an alternate reality version of Barry himself, apparently generated by running faster than light and wrapping back around his own existence. There are potentially an infinite number of him as his own personal timeline has come unstuck from time. Nothing he does affects causality anymore, it just creates alternate realities with a new iteration of Barry Allen who then experiences the results of his actions. Zoom is perpetually stuck moving across a shifting kaleidoscope of alternate realities, while being disconnected from all of them. This experience has driven him to utter desperation to escape this unbearable situation that is sending him mad. The only way he can reduce the constantly multiplying alternate realities that he is being buried under is to kill different versions of himself, bringing their timelines to a halt. If he can kill every alternate Barry Allen he has inadvertently created then he will have reversed his breaking of the spacetime continuum and will return to normal.

Zoom appears at irregular intervals in an attempt to destroy the Barry Allen of Earth-27. So far Barry has always managed to fend him off by sending him spinning away back across the myriad alternate realities of the multiverse. A number of times Zoom has been killed, some of which may have been suicide attempts, but he always reappears after a while. Over his appearances he has gotten steadily more and more deranged and ruthless. At first he tried to run Barry out of existence into the speed force while apologetically explaining that he was the real Barry Allen and that he regretted having to erase his existence. After being foiled a few times he resorted to attacking directly, attempting to kill Barry by vibrating his hand to cut him into pieces. He also ceased to care about innocent bystanders to this conflict, cutting down anyone who got in the way of his getting at Barry.

Zoom is the bane of Barry's life as the Flash, a perpetual danger that is only growing in menace. He is seeking to find the point in time and space where Zoom was created in an attempt to avert the event. This would cause Zoom to have never existed, effectively saving both of them. Every time he attacks him Barry attempts to reason with his increasingly unhinged self but Zoom is listening less and less, apparently having heard it all many times before. From things he says he has already killed many other Barry Allens, possibly thousands of them. In his most recent appearances he looks to be losing control of his speed force powers, stuttering and flickering as he moves. This is only making him more dangerous as he now shifts very rapidly in and out of time and dimensions making affecting him very difficult. On the plus side some of his strikes at Barry have proved harmless as he becomes physically insubstantial just as the blow lands. If he does not accomplish his mission soon the entire catastrophic situation may be resolved by his personal timeline just disintegrating. If he can Barry would like to save him from this and to see that he doesn't go through the torment he has experienced.

Jaime Reyes is the wearer of the Scarab, an alien device that forms a suit of dermal armor around its wearer to protect and empower them. They were created and are worn by the Reach people, an insectoid alien race that evolved on a low gravity world, which is why they are human-sized despite being arthropods with articulated external skeletons. Coming from a low-G world they are delicate creatures that cannot cope with the high gravity most other races in the galaxy prefer. To cope with life away from the protected environment of their homeworld they wear the special scarab suits that massively extend their strength and resilience and incorporate most of their advanced technologies.

Jaime obtained the suit as a volunteer, he was an intern with Kord Industries at the time when the Reach contacted Earth and requested the help of the Justice League and the Green Lantern Corps against enemies that were assailing them. This turned out to be the same coalition of warlike alien races that had launched a full-scale invasion of Earth some years ago, the incident that brought Earth to the attention of the Guardians of the Universe. Regarding this alliance of warmongers as a continued danger to Earth and wanting to bring them to justice for all their war crimes on Earth the massed superheroes of Earth launched an interstellar punitive expedition.

The Reach needed someone to act as an intermediary between them and the humans and allied aliens of the Earth superheroes. It would be best if this was a young member of their race as then they could bond one of their scarabs to him, letting him know all that they knew. Jaime stepped forward and volunteered to undergo the procedure, he was seized by a desire for adventure and to be a superhero, plus the young, female Reach ambassador was cute and he felt for her obvious desperation as her race was threatened with extirpation. The Justice League took this offer of his seriously and after discussion agreed to the procedure. It was agonizingly painful at first when the smooth blue ovoid was placed on his back and began to bond to him, but then it was complete and the dermal armor extruded over him for the first time. For Jaime it was amazing, suddenly he seemed to know everything and to be all-powerful. After a period of practice and tuition under the Reach he was pronounced ready for action.

After saving the Reach Jaime has gone on to many other adventures, both on and off Earth. He particularly fights those who seek to obtain and misuse alien technology, the Reach have had problems in the past with other races stealing their scarab technology and misusing it for their own ends. As the Blue Beetle Jaime has fought against several other scarab warriors who have turned out to be all sorts of alien races once he has beaten them and stripped them of their scarab. As well there are renegade elements within the Reach themselves who view the scarab technology as making them superior to other races and want to wage a war of conquest for the glory of the Reach.

Through all this Jaime has been supported by the Reach ambassador, the young female who first spoke to the Justice League. Despite being from different alien races they have fallen in love with each other. Though they are insectoids the Reach actually look quite attractive to humans as they have smooth bodies and faces proportioned similarly to humans, though their 'skin' is actually a chitin exoskeleton and feels like springy plastic. Unfortunately when they tried to make their relationship physical they found that significant differences in their anatomies precluded this. They have agreed to an open relationship while still regarding themselves as a couple. Jaime has subsequently had several physical relationships with other alien species that are broadly human compatible, alien females are what he mostly meets as nearly all of his adventures are off in space. Exasperated Green Lanterns have had to drag him out of the beds or mating pits of his latest amour several times to get him back on the mission they are supposed to be pursuing.

The second Arrowette is Green Arrow's daughter, Emiko Queen, his second child by his Japanese wife Shado. She is much younger than her older brother Connor as they had her after they were married. She grew up being intensively trained in archery by both her mother and her father and is already a superbly trained superhero despite her youth. As her parents begin to get older she and her brother are becoming the leaders of the new wave of archer heroes. Emiko herself has never wanted to be anything other than an archer, the talent and inclination she got from both parents runs strong in her.

Unlike her ascetic and spiritual brother Emiko is a child of the modern age. She looks set to take over Queen Industries later in life as she has an interest in business and technology. Right now though she is being a young punk of a superhero, not as clean-cut as they traditionally are. She sports elaborate piercings and has tattoos, something which are not usual for vigilantes as they form identifying marks which pose an identification risk. Emiko though is taking her archer superheroics at least semi-legitimate, working more closely with the authorities than her anti-authority rebel of a father. This is more in accord with her mother's methods, Shado is actually a special agent of the Japanese police, officially being a 'consultant' to them. In her time the vigilantes have become so numerous, organized and been an essential part of crimefighting for so long that they are being integrated as regular adjuncts of law enforcement. It is like how the Justice League started out as an association of powerful superheroes with no regard for political opinion and now they have embassies and speak at the UN and are seen as world leaders.

Emiko recently joined another new version of the Teen Titans, becoming the seemingly obligatory archer hero. In her time the Teen Titans name is at a far remove from its original lineup, having a number of members who are the teenage children of the teenagers who first formed it. The superhero movement has steadily grown in size over the years as they have trained new recruits and their own children.

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Giovanni Zatara is the father of Zatanna and he taught her most of what she knows about stage magic. Even today a lot of her new tricks are actually devised by him. He has no actual magical powers himself, in fact he doesn't even really know anything about real magical power. This is deliberate, he learned from his wife, the sorceress Sindella, just how dangerous magic is for mortals and he resolved never to get involved with it. His daughter can deal with magic without dooming her body and soul because she was born a magical being and it is natural for her.

Giovanni met and married a sorceress because he was a superhero when younger despite having no form of superpowers. He posed as a master of the occult, relying entirely on misdirection, bluff and clever gadgets secreted around his voluminous magicians costume (complete with billowing long, heavy black cloak and top hat). Intelligence and careful planning let him defeat crooks. He was so talented that he was a member of the precursor to the Justice League, the Justice Society, as their 'wizard' member. Most supervillains actually thought that he did have magical powers and feared him accordingly. He and his colleagues on the JS went to great lengths to maintain this charade.

He retired from superheroics after a lucky shot from a supervillain crippled his right knee. His wife wanted to heal it with magic but he declined, sticking to his earlier resolution about magic. He worked as a successful stage magician throughout his career as a superhero and continues to do so today, though he eschews his more physical tricks as he walks with the aid of a cane. He loves performing magic and plans to keep doing so for as long as he possibly can. He is still one of the most innovative and challenging magicians active today, known for his endless originality with his tricks.

Giovanni was more physical as a superhero than Zatanna, being a master of several martial arts. He deliberately chose some very obscure disciplines, partly to confuse opponents more familiar with the usual ones, and also just to be more exotic. Batman learned a lot from him during his training period before he first took to the streets as a vigilante. He encourages his daughter not to rely so much on her magic as a superhero but to develop her martial and acrobatic skills as well. When the chips are down Zatanna always resorts to her magic however, so she has never had the urgency needed to truly develop her skills in this area. Also secretly she finds that if she starts fighting physically it actually weakens her magic for some reason. One time when she was younger she stopped wearing the traditional magicians garb in favor of a costume that consisted of a black bodysuit, a red cape, and a long ponytail. This outfit was a lot more like that of a hero like Batman or Superman and she used her magic more directly physically. This though caused it to atrophy into a narrow set of powers based around elementalism. Only once she returned to her roots as a spellcasting magician did her magic regain its former potency.

Arthur Julius Curry is the son of Aquaman and his wife Mera. He was born after they defeated Ocean Master and his allies, reorganized Atlantis into a republican democracy and abdicated the throne. This means that young Julius is technically not a prince, but Atlanteans habitually still regard him as such. He grew up splitting his time between the surface world, Atlantis and his mother's realm of Xebel. His parents and other relatives have striven to teach him all about his heritage from these different worlds, while impressing on him that he is in control of his life, his destiny is not ruled by the accident of his birth or ancient tradition.

As a boy Julius has mostly inherited the powers of his father, his marine telepathy and control of marine life. Unlike his father though his marine telepathy extends beyond natural marine life to influence over some of the bizarre monstrosities from the beyond that have made their home in the deepest parts of the oceans. Arthur regards such entities as dangerous enemies and has often fought to prevent them rising up and devouring Atlantis and indeed the entire world. Julius though gets on with them and they will talk with him as a friend, or at least someone they do not attempt to devour on the spot. If he calls on them they will surge up from the depths to aid him. Many of them are very powerful and there is a surprising variety. His most powerful ally in this regard is Cthulhu himself, the massive bat-winged octopus-headed elder god that other people regard as an agent of the apocalypse. Julius refers to Cthulhu as his friend and the two have a private relationship based on some understanding of the true nature of what the elder gods/deep ones/other monstrous entities from the beyond actually are. Julius does not often call on his fearsome friend but when he does so no one has yet been able to defeat him.

Most of the time though Julius is just a fairly normal teenager. His main interest when not having to attend to his extensive program of schooling is hanging with his friends. A lot of his friends are not superheroes but other teenagers from the various realms he divides his time between. A thing he likes to do is get them all together at the beach, the meeting place of land and sea where they can all come together to enjoy themselves. He does use his powers as a member of the Teen Titans, his father thinks that he should know how to handle himself as a warrior. Arthur never sought conflict but it found him all the same and he continues to fear that there might be a resurgence of conflict within Atlantis. Julius knows a little about magic from his mother but it is not a major interest for him, he leaves that to his sisters. Given who his parents are Julius is an extraordinarily good-looking lad and young women throw themselves at him, including young superheroines. Julius though does not want to get heavily involved with anyone too soon and is looking out for someone extraordinary, like how his parents met.

Many years into the future, after even Tim Drake has retired as Batman, there is a need again for a Batman in Gotham. Tim's plan to eradicate crime in Gotham was successful and he put an end to all the gangs and crazies. The regeneration of Gotham was completed, all the slums cleared away and replaced with glittering new housing, shops and offices. Levels of crime and unemployment dropped to almost zero. People could walk the streets at night in complete safety. Constant patrols by bat drones kept such a close watch over the city that committing a crime, let alone getting away with one, became almost impossible. Automatic systems instantly detected any crime in progress and took action to prevent it and mete out the appropriate punishment. A computerized justice system could process a trial in milliseconds rather than the previous months or years.

With law enforcement now in the hands of Artificial Intelligences and robots the need for the human GCPD declined to the point that it has steadily been reduced to almost nothing. The once vast army of police officers now consists of a few hundred men and women whose nominal job is to keep an eye on the system to make sure it doesn't do anything inappropriate. The record of the AI systems designed by Barbara Gordon though is far better than any human police force has ever been. The corruption and brutality police forces are notorious for is now a thing of the past, the robots are scrupulously honest and correct. Much of police procedure is now devised by the AI itself and is in many ways much more sensitive and responsive than the simple-minded and harsh measures of the past.

The one flaw in this perfectly designed system is of course the humans themselves. Though the citizens of Gotham now have every material comfort and security they need a new wave of criminal activity has arisen. These people, most of them quite young, commit crime not for profit or from mental pathology, both of which have been cured as reasons for crime, but for thrills, for kicks. They commonly emulate the more colorful criminals of Gotham's famously crime-ridden past. The exploits of famous crooks such as the Joker are now the fodder of endless entertainment vids and games, similar to the peculiar attitude of former generations to other historical periods like the 'Wild West'. The most numerous and dangerous of these movements are the 'Jokerz', young thugs who dress up as sinister clowns in order to carry out assaults and acts of vandalism. Sometimes they heist equipment they need but most of their attacks are essentially random, meant to do nothing more than cause distress to other people so the Jokerz can laugh at them. They careen across the city in 'clown cars', set off gas bombs in public places, burst into homes and murder people with knives and if they can't think of anything particularly clever just fire guns into buildings and at pedestrians and vehicles.

The automatic law enforcement system is struggling to cope with this new wave of chaos. It's algorithms designed to spot potential criminals are baffled by how talented young people with good educations and happy home lives decide to spend their free time causing mayhem. The bat drones that are the main enforcement arm of the city lack the firepower to cope, the Jokerz and others just shoot them out of the sky or hack their communications networks and take them over and turn them against the city or disable them. The drones used to be larger and more robust with serious weaponry but the lack of need has seen them steadily disarmed over the years.

The relative scale of this movement is still small compared to the immense size and population of Gotham City but it is still worrying as it is growing fast. Most people and the AI's seem unable to come up with an effective response, debating the root causes and how to address them while the city is being set on fire and people are gunned down in the streets. One man though still holds old-fashioned attitudes as to how to respond to street violence. Bruce Wayne retired as Batman thirty years ago, and he was way too old even then. He is now a very old man but his mind is as hard and sharp as ever. It was obvious to him that Gotham needed Batman again. The problem was that the tough young street punks with a burning desire for justice that he had previously relied on for recruits were long gone. Modern kids were gentle, utterly unaccustomed to any form of violence, or even meanness now that bullying and internet trolling had been eliminated. As well contact sports were a thing of the past, martial arts, boxing and even football all banned for many years now. Illegally searching through city records (Bruce knows how to bypass all the city AI's, he always made sure he understood what Barbara and Tim and their friends were up to) for anyone suitable the best he could come up with was a lad named Terry McGuinness. Terry was a keen athlete who liked to show off his prowess with crazy stunts. Harmless antics in Bruce's day but now they made him regarded by the school boards as a young hooligan and one to be watched. Bruce made contact with him and explained to him about the rising problems within the city and how he wanted him to do something about it. Unlike everybody else in the city Terry was not inclined to expect the automatic systems to sort out the problem for him and agreed that he wanted to do something.

Bruce has trained Terry as much as he has been able to in the short time available, but he's not as talented as most of his previous apprentices. He just can't push him anything like as hard as he did Dick or Tim, he'd become discouraged and quit if he experienced too much pain or didn't have time to hang out with his friends and girlfriend. To make up for Terry's deficiencies, most of which are the product of the genteel age he has grown up in, he has equipped him with a device brought out of storage. This is the ultimate batsuit built by Tim Drake shortly before he retired for want of anything to do on the streets of Gotham. It is older technology, from a previous generation and with a custom operating system that is a pain to use with all sorts of eccentric behavior, but this is an advantage as it means that the Jokerz and the other chaos gangs will not be able to hack it. It was built by a man who spent almost his entire life engaging in life or death battles and so is heavily armored and loaded with weaponry. There used to a be whole range of such suits with all sorts of configurations for different scenarios but this is the only one Bruce has been able to get working, the others are still in storage in the old Batcave.

Equipped with this formidable piece of gear Terry as the new Batman is now well more than a match for the Jokerz and anyone else he has to fight. This is just as well as he tends to take a lot of hits, tending to rely on the near impenetrable armor of the suit rather than dodging them like Bruce had to do. The suits built-in weapons let him take down opponents with any hit he makes, so he still does not know how to throw a punch or kick that well. He mostly uses the one thing he is good at, acrobatics, to move around and just touch his opponents and let the suit do the rest. When in the field he is in constant communication with Bruce through secure transmission. Bruce does all the thinking, his detective and technical skills being so much superior to Terry's. While Terry occasionally operates alone Bruce does not like this, he doesn't trust him to get along without having his voice in his ear. This occasionally exasperates Terry, who finds the curmudgeonly carping of Bruce to be annoying at times. With the overconfidence of youth he thinks that he can handle himself pretty well by now. He at least appreciates the need for secrecy and so far has told no-one that he is the new Batman that has got the city buzzing, even if he does like reading about the discussion of his latest exploits on media feeds.

The reappearance of a Batman has Gotham in a ferment. Opinion as to who it is is much debated, with the commonest view being that it is the Batman of Gotham come out of retirement, the suit is in his style and colors of black and red. Thoughtful people express doubt that he'd still be physically capable after all this time. The few careful observers of the video captures have noted that the new Batman is nowhere near as adept as the old Batman, he fights in simplistic fashion and eats hits rather than dodging or blocking them. The Jokerz and others have reacted with excitement and are scrambling over each other to try and kill the new Batman. This at least has the advantage of drawing them into confrontations where Terry can take them out. Predictably some people are blaming the new Batman for being the cause of the chaos, despite his having only just appeared after several years of escalating violence in the city.

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The mentor of the new Batman is visibly ancient and decrepit. Much of what people think of as aging is in fact just a lifetime of chronic unhealthy living catching up with you. If you actually lead a healthy lifestyle it is possible to stay fit and strong into advanced old age. Bruce Wayne has been a health and fitness fanatic all his life, but even he is now stiff and short of breath. He has few old injuries from his long career as Batman, he suffered only a few serious wounds in his entire fighting career. Most of his opponents were so inept in combat that they never had a chance of hurting him, especially in the armored suits he wore.

Wayne is as rich as ever, richer in fact. The Waynetech corporation continues to be a powerhouse of the economy, generating vast profits each year. Now that Bruce is no longer secretly diverting a large proportion of its revenue to vigilante crimefighting it has been doing better than ever. He effectively controls much of the city through his financial and land holdings and being one of the largest and best employers. If not for the recent rise in nihilistic violence he might have continued in his retirement, which consisted mostly of writing up detailed case histories for all his many adventures for the benefit of some distant posterity.

Bruce regards his modern world with bad-tempered exasperation. To him it seems like people have lost their drive and become soft and complacent. In his younger days life was desperate and people were prepared to make great sacrifices for the sake of justice. He remembers how much the fight to redeem Gotham cost him and those who fought with him, in many cases their health, sanity and even lives. Though at the time he seemed cold and indifferent to the suffering of his allies he felt all their pains keenly. He curses himself for a sentimental old fool as memories of old times rise up in him and make him maudlin. There is no time for that, he needs to concentrate on the fight in front of him.

Bruce regards his new apprentice Terry as not a patch on the people from the old days. You work with what you've got though, not what you'd like to have. He finds it a struggle though not to lose his patience with him as he blunders across Gotham. He tries to remember how inept the Robins could be at times and how often he had to save their necks as Terry crashes through his operations.

The many women in Bruce's life are mostly long gone. Some of them died of old age, others were assassinated by their enemies/ostensible friends. He has a fair number of children and their descendants around the world but most of them have developed lives outside vigilantism as the world becomes more orderly. People he knew as children in their early teens are old people like him now. Their children didn't need to take up the hard and dangerous life they did as they won, they beat crime and brought about the world they dreamed of. His old superpowered allies are now mostly far off in space dealing with grander problems, petty crime in Gotham isn't their concern. In the end it looks as if he will die as he lived, alone, with no one truly knowing who he is.